Karl Marx 
Events in Syria—Session of the British Parliament— 
The State of British Commerce 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 6021, 11. August 1860 

From an Occasional Correspondent. 
London, July 28, 1860. 

The Blue Book on the Syrian disturbances having only just been issued, and 
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe having announced for Tuesday next his inter- 
pellation respecting the Syrian affairs, I delay entering on this momentous 

subject, and would only warn your readers to not be carried away by the 
sentimental declamations of the Decembrist press, the feelings of horror at 
the atrocious outrages of wild tribes, and the natural sympathy felt for the 
sufferers. But there are a few points which ought steadily to be fixed upon. 
In the first instance, the Russian Empire, consequent upon the internal 
collisions that have arisen out of the serf emancipation movement and the 
dilapidated state of finances, finds itself in a fix out of which the present 
Government knows not how to get itself safe by a war on a grand scale. War 
appears to them the only means of shifting off the impending revolution so 
confidently predicted in Prince Dolgoroukow's La vérité sur la Russie. 

Consequently, it is about three months since Prince Gorchakoff tried to 
reopen the Oriental question by issuing his circular on the grievances of the 
Christians in Turkey, but his appeal, reechoed only by a solitary voice from 
the Tuileries, fell flat on the ears of Europe. Even from that time Russian and 
French agents were bestirring themselves to bring about a politico-religious 

row—the former on the Dalmatian, the latter on the Syrian coast—both 
movements supporting each other, since the troubles in Montenegro and the 
Herzegovina compelled the Porte to withdraw almost the whole Turkish 
army stationed in Syria, so as to leave the arena open to the high-pitched 
antagonism of the barbarous clans of the Lebanon. The Emperor of the 

French found himself placed in the same necessity as the orthodox Czar, 
of looking out for some fresh and thrilling crusade, to plunge his empire again 
into the Lethe of war-hallucinations. The Italian movement, slipping out of 

Events in Syria—Session of the British Parliament—The State of British Commerce 

his leading-strings, and taking a course contrary to the direction he wanted 
to impart to it, had, as was delicately hinted in the Constitutionnel, become 
a bore in the opinion of Paris. His attempts at wheedling the Prince Regent 
of Prussia into a violent "consolidation of Germany," to be paid by a "moral 
compensation" for France in the shape of the Rhenish provinces, turned out 
a signal failure, and even cast some ridicule on the entrepreneur of the 
emancipation-of-nationalities dodge. The conflict Louis Napoleon found 
himself involved in with the Pope damaged the prop on which this sway over 
the peasantry rests—the Catholic clergy of France. The Imperial exchequer 

1 o was reduced for some time to, and continues in a state of, exhaustion, which 

it has vainly tried to cure by throwing out the hint of the expediency of an 
emprunt de la paix (a peace-loan). This was too much even for Decembrist 
France. To eke out one loan contracted on the pretext of war by a subsequent 
loan contracted on the pretext of peace, was a presumption abhorrent even 
to the Paris stock-jobbers. Some faint voice in the emasculated Paris press 
dared to insinuate that the blessings of the second Empire were as great as 
expensive, the nation having bought them by an increase to the amount of 
fifty per cent of the public debt. The project of a peace loan of 500,000,000 f. 
was consequently dropped, a retreat that only encouraged Mr. Favre to 

descant in the Corps Legislate on the impending "financial crash," and to 
tear to pieces the flowery gauze which the Imperial Budgetmonger had 
thrown over the State chest. The strictures in the Corps Législatifamong 
the "chiens savans" (the learned dogs) of the mock representation, hazarded 
by Mr. Favre and Mr. Ollivier, on the characteristic features of the De- 
cembrist régime, as well as the furious onslaught on the intrigues of the "old 
parties," with which the official, the semi-official, and officious press of 
Paris teems, coincided in bearing witness to the stern fact, that the rebellious 
spirit of Gaul is rekindling from its cinders, and that the continuance of the 
usurper's rule again depends on the enactment of a grand war-spectacle, as 
it did two years after the coup d'état, and again two years after the conclusion 
of the Crimean episode. It is evident that the Autocrat of France and the 
Autocrat of Russia, laboring both under the same urgent necessity of sound- 
ing the war-trumpet, act in common concert. While Bonapartist semiofficial 
pamphlets offered to the Prince Regent of Prussia, "German Union," backed 
by a "moral compensation" for France, the Emperor Alexander, as has just 
been publicly stated, without a denial on the part of the Berlin governmental 
press, in the publications of the German "National Association," openly 
proposed to his uncle the annexation to Prussia of the whole of Northern 
Germany up to the Main, on the condition of a cession to France of the 
Rhenish Provinces, and of connivance at the progress of Russia on the 
Danube. It is this fact simultaneously thrown out by both the Autocrats that 

1 

Karl Marx 

has brought about the rendezvous at Teplitz between the Emperor of Austria 
and the Prince Regent. The conspirators of Petersburg and Paris had, how- 
ever, in case their temptations of Prussia should fail, kept in reserve the 
thrilling incident of the Syrian massacres, to be f ollowed by a French inter- 
vention which as it would not do to enter through the main gate, would open 

the back door of a general European war. In respect to England I will only 
add, that, in 1841, Lord Palmerston furnished the Druses with the arms they 
kept ever since, and that, in 1846, by a convention with the Czar Nicholas, 
he abolished, in point of fact, the Turkish sway that curbed the wild tribes 
of the Lebanon, and stipulated for them a quasi-independence which, in the 

run of time, and under the proper management of foreign plotters, could 
only beget a harvest of blood. 

You are aware that the present Parliamentary session stands unrivalled 
by a startling succession of Government failures. Apart from Mr. Gladstone's 
abortion of protective duties, not one single important measure has been 
carried. But while the Government were withdrawing bill after bill, they had 
contrived to smuggle through the second reading a little resolution, consisting 
of one single little clause, which, if carried, would have brought about the 
greatest constitutional change witnessed in England ever since 1689. That 
resolution simply proposed the abolition of the local English army in India, 
its absorption into the British army, and consequently the transfer of its 
supreme command from the Governor-General at Calcutta, to the London 
Horse Guards, alias the Duke of Cambridge. Quite apart from the other 
serious consequences such a change must be fraught with, it would put part 
of the army out of the control of Parliament, and, on the grandest scale, add 
to the Royal patronage. It seems that some members of the Indian Council, 
who unanimously objected to the Government project, but, by virtue of the 
Indian Act of 1858, can occupy no seats inthe House of Commons, whispered 
their protests into the ears of some M.P.s, and so it came that when the 
Government already considered their dodge to be safe, a sudden Parliamen- 
tary émeute, led by Mr. Horsman, broke through their intrigue in the very 
nick of time. It is a truly ludicrous spectacle, this perplexity of a Cabinet 
unexpectedly found out, and the bewilderment of a House of Commons 
fretting at the snares laid to its own profound ignorance. 

The declared value of the exports for last month shows the progress of 
the downward movement of British commerce. I have singled out in a pre- 
vious letter, compared with the exports of June, 1859, there is a falling off 
of nearly a million and a half sterling for June, 1860. 

The returns for the month of June in the last three years are as follows: 

1858. 1859. 1860. 
£10,241,433 £10,665,891 £9,286,454 

Events in Syria—Session of the British Parliament—The State of British Commerce 

For the half year ending with the 30th June, the declared value of the exports 
is less by a million than in the same six months of last year: 

1858. 1859. 1860. 
£53,467,804 £63,003,159 £62,019,989 

The falling off of the last month is distributed over the cotton, cotton yarn, 
linen, hardware, and cutlery, iron and worsted trade. Eveninthe exports of 
manufactured woolen goods, the trade in which has hitherto shown steadily 
increasing prosperity, this month excepted, "woolen and worsted yarn" 
shows a decline. The export of cotton goods for the six months to British 

1 o India has declined from £6,094,430, in the first half of 1859, to £4,738,440 in 

the first half of 1860, or by £1,360,000 worth of goods. 

With regard to the imports the most striking feature is the huge bulk of 
the cotton arrivals. In June, 1860, 2,102,048 cwts. have been received, as 
against 1,665,306 cwts. in the June of last year, and 1,339,108 cwts. in June, 

15 1858. The increase for the six months is no less than three millions of hundred 

weights; so that the half year receipts are greater by more than 60 per cent. 
The cotton imported inthe month of May, 1860, is worth more by £1,800,000 
than the import in 1859. No less than six millions and a half sterling have 
been spent in raw cotton in the first five months of 1860, beyond what was 
so spent in the same period of the previous year. 

If the rapid decrease in the export of cotton goods and yarns be compared 
with the still more decided increase in the cotton imports, it will be under- 
stood that some cotton crisis is approaching, the more so since the new 
arrivals of the raw material fall upon unusually replete cotton stores.